Day Traders Diary

8/6/10

U.S. stocks slumped at the open on Friday, after a bigger-than-expected drop in employment last month hit sentiment and revived concerns about the economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 70 points to 10,604, weighed down by more than 1% drops in shares of Hewlett-Packard, Home Depot, and JP Morgan Chase. The S&P 500 index dropped 7 points to 1,117, weighed down by the energy and financial sectors. The Nasdaq Composite fell 20 points to 2,272. The economic news has taken the wind out of the bulls' sails, but the commoditiy stocks continue to perform well. Fertilizers stocks have been on fire. The nitrogen and fertilizer company, CF is jumping 2.4% after beating earnings estimates.
Freeport McMoran is up 2% this morning. The oils are lower. After a big run up yesterday, Transocean is down 3% on a downgrade. On the earnings front Kraft, AIG, Mohawk Industries, Netsuite, and Croc's are all higher by at least 2% following better than expected numbers. Activision, Big 5 Sports, and Washington Post are lower following earnings. The retailers in general are lower except for
Polo Ralph Lauren. Polo is up a percent after announcing a stock buyback. After the first half an hour the averages slowly recovered, but it's looking like a down day. Through the morning the averages remained quiet until just before 11 o'clock when the averages dropped sharply, falling over 100 points. The Nasdaq
fell over 30 points. Commodities are selling off and money seems to be flowing back into long term bonds. In the afternoon the averages remain weak, but off the lows. A number of stocks are higher including Research in Motion, Freeport McMoRan, Kraft, McDonalds, and BP. In the last hour the averages slowly improved almost reaching the unchanged level. Not a bad recovery. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 21 points at 10,653.
The blue-chip average still ended with a weekly gain of 1.8%. The S&P 500 index fell 4 points to 1,121, weighed by the energy and the financial sectors. The broad market average rose 1.8% this week. The Nasdaq Composite fell 4 points as well to close at 2,288, but still gained 1.5% this week.

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